Remembrance
by jenuinetears
Summary: :my response to BebePanda401's Object Challenge: Now that he's gone, the only thing that's left of him is his white cloak now in her hands and her own memories of him. Can she get over him, or will his memory pain her forever? T for death. Ruka/Luciano


Hello reader. =) Here's my entry for BebePanda401's contest! It turned out longer than I expected. :x It's my longest oneshot now.

Object of choice for the contest: Luciano's cloak

Summary: Now that he's gone, the only thing that's left of him is his white cloak now in her hands and her own memories of him. Can she get over him, or will his memory pain her forever?

This has much AU. This is post the Three Emperors/WRGP arc, and since that hasn't even happened in the anime yet, all the stuff you see down below is of my imagination. I assume that Ruka's around 12 by the time the Three Emperors are defeated, so that is how old she is at the start of this.

I use Japanese names.

I use the 'Luciano' spelling, because I prefer it.

Warning: slight plot spoilers for season 3.

Pairings: Mostly Ruka/Luciano, there's Aki/Yusei, Ruka/Sly, and Rua/Patty if you squint.

Disclaimer: 5D's is not mine. Nor is Luciano, sadly. But the vague hints for the ending of the Three Emperors/WRGP arc are my own. And I am in no way saying that's the ending for that arc.

~(-)~

Remembrance

~(-)~

The wind hurled it off, the cloak wrapped around his shoulders, and it was blown to her direction. Her fingers grasped it. She did it without thinking. The white fabric felt smooth to her fingers, she didn't want to let go. So she didn't.

Rua stared at her. She knew what he was thinking. Why was she holding onto the cloak of one of the Emperors? What was she going to do with it, give it to Crow once he won as a trophy? Or return it to its owner if _he _won? Bile filled her throat. She didn't know. All she knew was that her mind refused to let her drop the fabric onto the ground or let it continue to fly away from them.

He was dueling Crow. His sadistic nature showed through the whole time, his eerie laughs ringing around in the air every time Crow flinched as he took damage. They both played well. His Skiel fought like a champion, but in the end it was no match. Crow won with one more attack, and Luciano crashed, and fire started without even a second to stop it. He exploded in two, chest torn apart in an inhumane fashion. She didn't know that this was a haunting memory of Placido's first downfall. That this was going to happen two more times before this mess was over. But then the flames grew stronger and his body began to get consumed.

There was no water nearby. They could only watch as his Duel Runner and his partly robotic body burned into ashes in front of them.

What were these feelings? Why was she mourning the death of an only partly human being who'd tried to kill her?

Crow sighed.

"This doesn't feel good. He was a bad guy. But I don't feel happiness for killing him. Just remorse. He was just a… kid. An evil kid. But still a kid. And killing itself doesn't give me a good feeling. It's not supposed to."

Aki stared at him in understanding.

"It's like when we defeated the Dark Signers."

_But Luciano won't come back like they did_.

Demak's death didn't hurt her as much as Luciano's did. She didn't know Demak, only knew him as a man who'd taken Ancient Fairy Dragon prisoner. It was a tiny load off her shoulders once she learned that he still lived on, and there was a small moment of relief. But Luciano, he pretended to be a student at Duel Academia and had become her friend, sort of. Before he'd tried to kill her. That was an unforgiveable action. At least it was supposed to be. And now Crow had killed him, even though it hurt him to inflict pain to a child, which Luciano was. He wouldn't be coming back, there was no redemption. No second chance.

The four of them watched as the licking flames sprung up higher and higher, and then as they sizzled down after devouring him and turning him into ashes. Now, the cloak in her hands was the only thing of his that remained.

"Let's leave," whispered Rua. "Let's find Yusei and Jack."

Aki stared at the white material that lay in her hands. His final memory.

"Are you…?"

She grasped it firmly, held it in her hands so that nobody could wrench it away from her.

"I'm keeping it."

Then the four of them went off together to find Yusei and Jack, who were facing the other two Emperors of Yliaster.

"Let Yusei be safe," muttered Aki as she walked past Luna in her longer stride.

_Why couldn't Luciano be safe too? Why was he an enemy?_

~(-)~

The whole ordeal was over. The WRGP, the three Emperors of Yliaster, evidence of Yliaster still existing anymore, Bruno- they had all disappeared. And they had to restart their lives and get used to not having to save New Domino anymore. While it was a blessing from one viewpoint, it was a sad thing too.

She wouldn't say that missing the action was a bad thing. But she wanted to feel the excitement brush her face. The rush that raced through her body like _it_ was the racetrack.

And now he was gone. Luciano.

It wasn't clear, even to herself, why she missed him. He was her enemy. And he was gone.

But whenever she felt that white fabric rubbing against her fingertips, even if it was a simple brush, she remembered how he was trapped in eternal youth now. None of them knew how much of him was robotic, but a good deal of him was and he been nearly non-aging even when she first met him. But now his whole growing process had stopped, when both he and his D-Wheel had been ripped apart and burned to ashes, and what little remained of him would never become an adult. He'd be a child forever.

And she tried to imagine him as an adult in her mind, she really did. But the image never looked right, whether he was too gangly-looking, too childish, or looked like a Placido with long red hair.

So she tried to get it all out. She tried to draw him as a grown up on paper. But it didn't end up right. His full body portrait with Emperor gear seemed all gawky and his expression seemed too joyous. The only thing that seemed realistic was the smooth flawless cloak that hung down his shoulders, with the hood set back so you could see his head clearly.

Then with a different idea in mind, she drew him again. This time, she drew the adult Luciano that wasn't real, wasn't the _true _Luciano, the one with long braided hair down his shoulder, clean green eyes and a more serious look. This one ended up much better, but something was… missing.

Looking at them, she kept both. She hung them up with cheap frames next to where his cloak laid. Even though the second one was better, that wasn't the Luciano she wanted to remember. She wanted to remember all of him, not just the better, charismatic parts.

When Rua barged into her room after they were hung up nicely, to say he was surprised would be an understatement.

"Why-"

He stopped mid sentence. All the possibilities for what he wanted to say spread across in a list in Ruka's mind. They were questions she asked herself.

_Why do you still have that cloak? Why haven't you forgotten him? Everyone else is moving on, even Sherry. Why can't you let go of him?_

But Rua didn't ask any of these questions. Instead he hastily straightened his face and finished his question like he was supposed to with no nosiness.

"-are you still up here? Dinner's ready downstairs!"

He grinned his signature smile, and then fled away. They both knew he was horrible at covering up what he truly wanted to say. As he left, she saw his smile drop as soon as he was out the door. A trace of sadness flickered in his features. She almost wished that he _had_ asked one of those questions.

She couldn't even answer them. Those questions. With one last look at Luciano's cloak and her portraits of him, she shoved him out of her mind and ran down to eat dinner.

As the years ran by, his grip on her mind slowly faded. The cloak in her room didn't have that magic touch anymore. The drawing looked stupid and amateurish next to all her new sketches that were tacked up. They were thrown into the wastebasket in shame. Slowly, her memory of Luciano started to dim, and the images of his duel with her and Leo started to lose their clear touch that had once been so evident.

Three years had gone by since their defeat of the Three Emperors and the end of the WRGP.

When she held hands with Sly, she unconsciously imagined that he was Luciano. Then she realized what she was doing as cried out in shock. With subtle worry that was characteristic of him Sly asked her if she was OK, then she said she was alright.

'Of course I'm fine,' she said to the now nonchalant Sly.

But she couldn't say how the memories of Luciano burned bright once more, and that there was familiar bile creeping up her throat again.

Four years since he died.

Her hair wasn't in pigtails any longer. Now, when she rode her new turquoise and pink D-Wheel given to her for her birthday, her hair was thrust backwards with every stroke of wind. It was exhilarating. Now that she didn't ride a Duel Board any longer, her memory of Luciano started to fade again. She wanted it to be permanent this time.

Five years.

She made plans with Rua, Sly and Patty to attend that same college for next year that was in another city in Japan. They would only go home on break, as their only reason was to see their friends back home. All four of them were accepted.

Six.

In preparation for college that was to start in a week, which was composed of packing and goodbyes, she didn't pack his cloak into her luggage. On her last day before she left for the train, she gave into temptation and stroked the fabric. That spark lit up inside her one last time. Once more, the image of his maniac expression in their one duel stood clear in her mind and scared all the other memories away. She relived everything that she'd been trying to forget. A sigh trickled out of her mouth, then another followed. She breathed his name.

_Luciano._

Then she left the cloak behind, she left _him_ behind as she slipped into bed. The next day as she left, she didn't spare one glance to the last remaining remnant of Luciano, his cloak.

It was time to move on.

~(-)~

Once more, I'm saying that this isn't the ending to 5D's. I have no proof that it's Crow who duels Luciano (though I think he's going to be) or that Luciano is torn in two. All the ending stuff found in here has been made up by me. Once the real ending to 5D's is seen in the anime, I may rewrite this to be in the same universe as 5D's. But for now, it's an AU!

With that over, please review and tell me what you think! ^^


End file.
